Apologies
if you were one of the unfortunate recipients of 25 copies of the last
Tips newsletter. Interesting the things you learn - when Windows server
reboots it resends emails in the cache that it thinks were not
delivered. If your server is fighting with new antivirus software and
reboots several times a day you can really tick off a bunch of people!

I will endeavour to catch you up with the skipped Tips on a gentle
gradient. Rather than including them all in a bumper issue I will send
a copy of the newsletter every few days until we are up to date.

RIAA
Wins Music Download Case
The recording industry has won a major fight in its effort to stop
illegal music downloading with a U.S. jury decision to impose $222,000
damages against a Minnesota woman who used a Web service to share
music. more

Nokia
Deal May Spell Death for GPS Devices
The $8 billion proposed acquisition of Navteq by Nokia signals an end
to standalone GPS devices, industry executives and analysts say.
Meanwhile, the GPS industry is keeping quiet. more

Man
arrested for using botnet to launch DoS attacks
A California man has been arrested for allegedly using a botnet to
launch distributed denial-of-service attacks against two businesses. more

Qwest
Blocking Virus-Ravaged PCs
In what is roughly a consumer ISP implementation of the enterprise
technology known as NAC (network access control), Qwest will warn, and
ultimately block, users whose systems are performing malicious
activity. more

Stopping
an Application from Starting Automatically
To stop an application from automatically starting when you start
Windows, click Start, Run, then type msconfig.exe then click OK. Select
the Startup tab to deselect the application you wish to stop.

Note: Some application may be started from autoexec.bat, config.sys or
Startup folder (click Start, All Programs, Startup). In this case, you
will need to manually edit or delete the program you wish to stop.

Many
people’s favourite non-sugar sweetener, Stevia, is now classified as
dangerous by the FDA, the US Food and Drug Administration more

A
natural flea and tick control formula
If you dog or cat has a problem with fleas or ticks – which is rare – I
recommend an all-natural flea powder. The ingredients are peppermint
oil, cinnamon oil, lemon grass oil and thyme oil. These natural oils
are harmless to dogs and cats, but they’re deadly to biting pests. You
can find similar products at the larger pet stores or on the Internet.

Consumer
alert: Popular air fresheners found to contain toxic
chemical
A test of air freshener products recently conducted by the Natural
Resources Defense Council found that 12 out of 14 popular air freshener
products contained a chemical known to be harmful to the health of
humans. Phthalates, known to cause... more

To become wealthy, you need some kind of investing advantage.
Otherwise, studies show, you will probably become poorer.

As a business consultant to the financial publishing industry, I am on
a first-name basis with some of the best investment experts in the
world. You might think that gives me a big advantage over you. After
all, I can reach these hotshots on their cellphones or corner them at
company events. But they aren’t allowed to give me personal advice -
and the advice they are allowed to give to me is the same advice they
give to the readers of their e-zines. If I want to know what they are
thinking, I can read their articles.

That said, I have enjoyed several distinct advantages that I have used
to increase my wealth. They have given me a much-better-than-average
return on the time and money I’ve been investing for the past 10 or 15
years - and I am happy to share five of them with you.

1. I have learned to be humble about my investment skills. (Thirty
years of making mistakes and surviving them will do that to you, if you
are the least bit sensitive to failure.)

I know how hard it is to predict the success of a person or of a
company. There are so many factors involved in success, intangible
factors that can’t be tracked by company reports or measured
mathematically. Whenever I make an investment in anything - be it a
natural resource like gold, or real estate, or a company (either in
debt or equity), I begin with the premise that I might be wrong. If the
positive results I expect are replaced by strongly negative ones, I get
out as fast and as painlessly as I can.

Setting a mental or actual stop-loss point before investing gives me a
big advantage over know-it-alls and wishful thinkers. Every marketplace
is filled with know-it-alls and wishful thinkers. It is not difficult
to outperform them.

2. My second advantage comes from the same source: the humility of past
failures.

I use a sliding-scale version of Pareto’s Law to allocate my resources.
As an ETR reader, you know that Pareto was a French-Italian economist
and the inspiration for Pareto’s Principle, which states that 80
percent of the effects of all kinds of things come from 20 percent of
the causes. The investment application of this principle would suggest
that I should put most (80 percent) of my resources (money and time)
into what I know best. And what I know best is how to start and grow
small businesses.

I haven’t started any new businesses since I semi-retired at age 50.
But the consulting I do now is based on this formula. Most of the
clients I take on are in the information-publishing business, since
that’s the business I know best. Next to that, I’ve had the most
experience in real estate. So the largest part of my investment
portfolio is invested in property.

If you looked at how I spend my time and money from this perspective,
you would see an allocation of resources that roughly matches my
experience. Half is invested in small business and another 30 percent
in real estate. Of the 20 percent that remains, it is pretty evenly
divided among stocks, bonds, and precious metals.

You can have the same advantage. Give the greatest weight to what you
know best, and be stingy about putting your time and money into what
you don’t know.

3. My third advantage is a derivative of this same humility: When it
comes time to invest in stocks and bonds and precious metals, I invest
conservatively and for the long term.

I have learned from my business and real estate experiences that I
can’t control outside market forces. I can’t control, for example, the
rate of inflation or the falling dollar or what the Fed is doing about
interest rates. What I can do is make the assumption that every market
will go up and down in the short term. But over the long term - at
least seven years (a typical business cycle) - the trend will be
positive.

So when I invest in the areas I know the least about, I am a long-term,
"value" investor. I buy into things that have a long-term performance
history, and I do it when they are at below-market prices.

You can put this advantage to work for you if you, too, practice
value-oriented, long-term investing.

4. My fourth advantage is not the result of my failures but of my
successes.

I have learned that if I persist in sticking with my first three
advantages - and not abandoning them when temporary circumstances go
against me - I will once again succeed. When a good investment goes
wrong or a good idea fails, I don’t jump to the conclusion that I
should move away from what I know and jump into something I don’t know
just because it seems hot for the moment. As a result, I have avoided a
lot of big mistakes.

Investor studies bear this out. It doesn’t matter, they suggest, what
particular sector you invest in or what particular system of investing
you choose, so long as you hold true to the course. The market will
eventually correct itself and take care of you. You have to trust it.

5. My fifth advantage is by far the most important.

I learned this about 30 years ago when I was working as a Peace Corps
volunteer in Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world. At the
time, I was living in a small, three-room, plaster-coated mud house in
the middle of N’Djamena, the capital city. The kitchen was a little
brick hut in the garden. The bathroom was a toilet and cold-water
shower in an outside shack. I was very happy living in that house with
K, among friends and colleagues who (like me) were making just enough
money to live on.

I remember sitting on the porch on a rainy day, watching our dog bark
at a monkey in a tree and thinking, “No matter how much wealth you
eventually acquire, you will never be happier than you are right now.”
I have kept this thought in my head all this time, and it has helped me
enormously over the years. Especially when I suffered business and
investment failures or was troubled by the threat of a loss in any way.

The things that are most valuable in life cost very little. If I have
my health, I can be happy with whatever happens to my wealth. I can
work. I can suffer losses. I can begin again.

Like my other four advantages, this one is available to you completely
and immediately. Just take a few minutes, once a day to think about it,
and the mental wealth it will bring you will multiply over time.

[Ed. Note: Michael Masterson and a group of marketing experts have put
together a practically fail-proof program for taking an online business
from concept to execution... and beyond. Join our priority notification
list by clicking here and be one of the first to learn more about this
brand new program.]
From the www.earlytorise.com
newsletter
[Early to Rise Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007]
If you’d like to subscribe to Early to Rise or suggest it to a friend,
please visit: here

It’s
been going on for two decades now and the trend is
accelerating... The militarization of US police. What do local police
departments need tanks, bazookas, and machine guns for? We may find out
the hard way some day: more

Domestic
spy satellite program put on hold. (Those pesky
citizens, some of them don’t even want to be spied on!) more